I Swapped Phone Time for Sex Time to See if Scrolling Really Does Kill Libidos

Last year, I started dating someone who doesn’t have any social media which means, instead of scrolling in bed every morning and night, we fuck.

I’ve always had a pretty high libido across a spectrum of longterm relationships and slut stints, but I’ve never, ever had or wanted this much sex in my life.

Maybe it’s hormone cycles, my saturn return or the fact we’re both hot and good communicators, but do phone habits also affect sex drive?

For the last decade, phones, social media and dating apps have opened up our worlds and helped us connect with (and get laid by) more people. But more partners doesn’t mean more sex. In fact, Australians are actually having less sex than ever.

A study by World Population Review published last week asserted Australia is the second sluttiest nation on Earth. It surveyed Australians between 25 and 44 and found we have an average of 13.3 sexual partners in our lifetimes (second only to Türkiye). We did it, literally.

In 2003, a study of 20,000 Australians in heterosexual relationships found they fucked 1.8 times a week on average. When the same study was conducted again 10 years later, that number was down to 1.4 times.

The results among young people are even starker. Yes, for a while we’d forged a trend of getting started earlier – about 20 per cent more 18 year olds are sexually active than 30 years ago – but that trend has started to reverse for the first time in a long time and, in 2020, 40 per cent of Australian 18-24-year-olds had never had a sexual encounter.

The frequency with which young people have sex is now plunging to the point of a global “sex recession”.

So what’s to blame?

“There are many reasons why people are having less sex,” Dr Lauren Rosewarne, a senior lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, said in one interview.

“These include fear of disease, the rise of one-person households, people living with their parents for longer periods of time, more hook-ups and less relationships, masturbation, poor-quality sex — meaning people desire less of it — and the easy availability of porn.”

On top of those very reasonable factors, we’re all depressed and/or anxious about something at least some of the time. We have no money, our jobs are suffocating and meaningless, we’re not getting enough sleep, we don’t know how to interact with people IRL, dating is hard and often disappointing and what’s the point of it all anyway because the Earth will combust in 100 years anyway. All of those thoughts swirling in your head at night are sure-fire libido exterminators.

But depression, anxiety, low self-esteem or confidence and low motivation are all side effects of regular social media use, too, and plenty of research has demonstrated that logging off or doing “social media detoxes” can dramatically improve your mental health – and increase you sexual desire.

One 2022 study into the effect of smartphone and social media use on sexual function showed, for women, problematic use of social media (which the paper also referred to as “addictive-like”) correlated with lower sexual arousal, difficulties lubricating, difficulties having orgasms, sexual dissatisfaction, coital pain and greater sexual distress. In men, problematic use correlated with lower erectile function, lower desire, intercourse dissatisfaction, overall sexual dissatisfaction and more difficulties having orgasms. The full gamut, really.

And, with about 75 per cent of us admitting to being addicted to our phones, we increasingly (and subconsciously) prioritise our phones over most other forms of connection and relaxation.

“On the one hand, we use technological devices for distraction, but then we find ourselves back on them during the times of our lives where intimacy should be the priority. We end up in this messy, always distracted zone,” according to Dr Sharif Mowlabocus, an Associate Professor at Fordham University who researches the interaction between digital behaviour and sex.

“Phones are still the first thing [people who claim phone addictions] touch when they wake up and the last thing they touch before they go to sleep. That should really be their partner.”

Dr Mowlabocus said social media and phone use has meant we’re all terrible at living in the moment.

“We’ve been trained into continual engagement and mental stimulation. As a result, we’re worried about just ‘being’,” he said.

But he said reducing your phone time or setting rules to limit it at home or in bed can help, a lot.

So, I tried it. Accidentally, at first.

When I first started seeing my current partner, I immediately noticed his phone was never anywhere near his bed. He’d leave it in his pants pocket when he got undressed or put it on the other side of his bedroom.

Naturally, I felt embarrassed wanting to have mine so close. Placing it purposefully under my pillow? Humiliating. Checking Instagram while he’s just lying next to me? There’s no way.

Now, once we get into bed, there’s not much else to do but chat, cuddle and gaze at each other. A perfect environment for physical intimacy. We naturally come together and find that we can’t keep our hands off each other. Then, we fall asleep.

When I wake up, with nothing else interesting to look at or touch, I reach for him.

It took a month or two to notice his habits had started to rub off on me. I was on my phone less. I cared about checking social media less. Overall I felt a little more present, calm and… horny.

A couple more months passed before I realised my screen time average had plummeted, a trend that I traced back to roughly when we started seeing each other regularly.

All the scientific evidence aside, and regardless of your libido, if you make more time for sex, you will probably have more sex.

As my therapist who diagnosed my insomnia told me: bed should be for sex and sleep, not phones. And I hope to keep it that way, at least while my honey’s around.